CX award availability disappeared from the QFF search engine sometime in late 2005/ early 2006.

I have signed up for an account with the British Airways Executive Club purely for the purpose of searching for CX award availability. I have used my country to be Austria, as you are not able to open an account with Australia as your country for the BAEC. I put no other transactions through this account.

CX J and F award availability has been very plentiful since about October 2008, and it is very handy to be able to search for this for travel around the Asia Pacific region. There is a small surcharge for using CX award availability, but I find that CX J and especially CX F is a great way to fly (although of course CX F travel to and from Australia is currenly not an option) so I am happy to pay this surcharge. You can get around the QFF assisted booking fee of 2500 points by paying $50 cash when booking the ticket. Not ideal, but then small change when compared to the actual cost of paying for a business class ticket.

However as QF J and F award travel is often so difficult to get, particularly at shortish notice (ie. a couple of weeks in advance of the date of travel), it is often a choice between paying a small surcharge on CX J, and not been able to access an award at all. Not a difficult choice.

QF Lad.